August 25, 2008

Working-Class Background - For Sale to Highest Dem/GOP Bidder

What I was trained in my high-achieving high-school Snyder in Jersey City, New Jersey to keep under wraps has become a hot commodity: My working-class background. The Dems and GOP are pulling out all stops - read that bypassing the goat cheese - to put their blue-collar selves or six degrees of separation from working-class roots on display. Well, I am willing to sell who I really am, under these layers of too much Baby Boomer education [University of Michigan, Harvard], to the highest bidder.

Here's exactly what they want from me:

My total comfort doing everything, from eating to writing an article, at the kitchen table. Yeah, I love the plastic table cloth too.

The body language that screams: Don't mess with this dame, Buster and that means you.

The tendency to slip into a lower-class speech pattern when under stress. In linguistics class in my doctoral program the research at the time showed that we all revert to our native dialect when we're dying. The whole hospice will know I am really white trash.

And, the big heart. I know people are as good as circumstances will allow. Often circumstances don't allow much.